AIMM Curator to Speak at Jacksonville Museum of Military History

Greg Stitz, Curator and Education Director for the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum (AIMM), will be speaking Thursday, October 19th at 6:00 p.m. on the topic of Peacetime Submarine Accidents as part of the War Stories Lecture Series at the Jacksonville Museum of Military History.

The War Stories Lecture Series is an educational lecture series/discussion series designed to explore American and Arkansas history. The lecture series is supported in part by a grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council.

A long-time historian in the field of submarine history with a special focus on submarine accidents, Greg has researched accidents from the sinking of the British submarine HMS A-1 in 1904 to the accidental grounding of the state-of-the-art, nuclear powered submarine USS San Francisco (SSN 711) in January 2005 as well as the recent fire aboard a Russian ballistic missile submarine just a few weeks ago.

One of the accidents to be discussed is the sinking of USS Squalus (SS 192) on 23 May, 1939. North Little Rock native Sherman L. Shirley, a Torpedoman First Class aboard Squalus, lost his life during the accident. TM1 Shirley is buried in the National Cemetery in Little Rock.